The Vacuous Politics of Franz Kafka

We have been lied to about Kafka. Our received image is that of a morose manic depressive, a gloomy and sickly bundle of nerves hacking away at his craft in isolation, like some Lana del Rey avant la lettre. But as shown by his diaries, published afresh by Penguin on the 100th anniversary of his death, nothing could be further from the truth. We have Franz Kafka’s best friend and spin doctor Max Brod to blame for this hackneyed distortion.